Top 5 WordPress Plugins for Video

Video has taken over the web, and according to Diode Digital, the average Internet user watches 186 videos each month. For those of us with easy access throughout the day to sites like YouTube, that number can grow exponentially. While, yes, you can easily embed some code into your blog post, there are many WordPress plugins designed specifically for video. From helping you share self-hosted videos to displaying videos from YouTube or Vimeo in a beautiful way, there’s something for everyone.

If YouTube is your go-to video site, this plugin will help you save time. You can search and directly embed videos, view analytics and even see what people across the web are saying about a video. Its settings page also allows you to automatically set defaults for videos you embed, and here are just a few:

Hide YouTube logo while playing

Show/hide related videos at the end

Show/hide the video title and other info

Show/hide annotations by default

Loop video

Force HD quality when available

Instead of copying and pasting HTML code, all you have to do is copy and paste the YouTube video URL into your post. That means no more messing around with code, and with the proper dimensions for video embeds set in the defaults, no need to edit that either.

With Google owning YouTube, that means video results often appear at the top of search results. Similar to a sitemap which organizes all of your blog posts, WP Video SEO generates a sitemap of all of your videos. Because it links specific videos to specific blog posts, if offers the ability to display a thumbnail of your video in search engines alongside your title, and description. With how visual the web is becoming, this is one of many WordPress plugins worth investing in.

Depending on what you’re working on, some videos may not be best uploaded to a site like YouTube. For example, if you’re selling a product or wanting a video to be seen by only a select group of people. With Video Embed & Thumbnail Generator, you can easily embed self-hosted videos in a wide variety of formats. Once a video is uploaded, you can choose a thumbnail from the video to set as the featured image, or add the URL to a different image.

Users can also opt to encode a video in the H.264 protocol, enabling it to work well with HTML5, and when a video is added to a post, it displays as the thumbnail you selected with a play button over top.

Also for self-hosted videos, Video.js uses an HTML5 video player to playback videos. Nowadays, HTML5 is supported in all major Internet browsers, including mobile browsers. You can completely customize the appearance of the video player, and since it is open source, it’s completely free.

Mike, I’m looking for a WordPress plugin that will allow me to play a video on my blog’s home page from a list of preselected videos. Many out there will display a gallery. I don’t want a gallery to appear, I want one of 5 or 6 different marketing videos to play and I want to different video to play each time someone lands on the page. Is there a plugin that you’ve seen that does this? Thank you.